I have a Github repository that I forked from some other project several months ago. It is now several months later and the original master repo has changed. I would like to update my repo to reflect those changes. Is this possible in the Github web interface? Or do I just need to delete the repo and re-fork it?

2 Answers
2

By default this will be your fork on the right (head repo) requesting to push its commits and changes to the original repo (base repo) on the left.

Click the drop down for both base repo and head repo and select each other's repos.

You want yours listed on the left (accepting changes) while the original repository is on the right (the one with changes to push). As illustrated in this image:

Send the pull request

If your fork has not had any changes, you should be able to automatically accept the merge.

If your code somehow conflicts or is not quite clean enough, then this will not work to update via the GitHub web interface and you will need grab the code and resolve any conflicts on your machine before pushing back to your fork.

Just adding: This is a great idea, but it might generate quite some noise for others as they will be labelled as a participant in the pull request. This isn't going to be ideal if you did not do much on your fork. Keep to using the command line as much as possible.
–
HydraApr 3 '13 at 9:48

This still works but yeah it's not ideal. Its definitely just a trick. Not the proper way to do it.
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Jake WilsonDec 3 '14 at 5:07

1

Confirmed a bad idea. This pollutes the repository in a way that Github suggest you to pull request an empty commit to the original project. See for example github.com/dthommes/RoboSpring/pull/3 - Once I contributed to it, then I synced and now Github wants me to push a "Syncing my fork" commit labeled as " Merge pull request #1 from dthommes/master … "
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usr-local-ΕΨΗΕΛΩΝDec 29 '14 at 14:33